Australia Day car flag flyers 'racist'

By Rhianna King

24 January 2012 — 5:00am

They are a regular sight across Perth as January 26 approaches - drivers flying Australia Day flags from their cars.

But the popularity of the annual trend might be about to fall, after research from the University of WA found drivers with Australia Day flags are likely to be more racist than those with un-adorned cars.

University of WA research suggests people who fly Australia Day flags on the side of their cars are more likely to be racist.

UWA sociologist and anthropologist Farida Fozdar and a team of assistants surveyed 513 people at last year's Australia Day fireworks on the Swan River foreshore.

One in five said they had attached flags to their cars to celebrate Australia Day.

Advertisement

Professor Fozdar said 43 per cent of those with car flags said they believed the White Australia Policy had saved Australia from many problems experienced by other countries, while only 25 per cent without flags agreed.

And 56 per cent of people with car flags feared the Australian culture and its most important values were in danger, compared with 34 per cent of those without flags.

Professor Fozdar said 35 per cent of those with flags felt people had to be born in Australia to be truly Australian, while 23 per cent believed that true Australians had to be Christian, compared with 22 per cent and 18 per cent respectively for the non-flag group.

"Very clear statistical differences in attitudes to diversity between those who fly car flags and those who don't, show that flag waving − while not inherently exclusionary – is linked in this instance to negative attitudes about those who do not fit the 'mainstream' stereotype'," she said.

She said the research also revealed clear differences in how people with car flags felt towards minority groups.

Those with the flags were less likely to feel positive towards Aboriginals, Muslims, asylum seekers and Asians in Australia, the research found.

"And an overwhelming 91 per cent of people with car flags agreed that people who move to Australia should adopt Australian values, compared with 76 per cent of non-flaggers," Professor Fozdar said.

A total of 55 per cent believed migrants should leave their old ways behind, compared with 30 per cent of those without flags.

Professor Fozdar said there was no clear link between education, gender, ethnicity, citizenship, voting pattern or income and flag flying, although her survey showed a slightly higher likelihood of younger rather than older people adopting the practice.

"In terms of nationalism, 88 per cent of those with Australia Day car flags said they thought it showed they were proud to be Australian, while only 52 per cent of those without flags thought so," she said.

"Some thought the increased popularity of flying Australia Day car flags was due to increased patriotism while others said it was simply peer pressure to follow the trend or avoid seeming unpatriotic.

"What I found interesting is that many people didn't really have much to say about why they chose to fly car flags or not."

Police Commissioner Karl O'Callaghan weighed into the debate today, saying he wouldn't fly flags on his car as they were "distracting."

Loading

“I don’t know that it necessarily means that people are racist. I think what it probably means is people are very enthusiastic about Australia Day,” he said.